Ontario's Rural Doctors

Rural doctors work in challenging conditions providing care to Ontario's 1,586,520 rural residents. The care often includes obstetrics, surgery, anesthetics and emergency medicine together with hospital access and care of the acutely ill.

The Section on Rural Practice's challenge is to improve working conditions by working within the profession's bargaining agent and by promoting and supporting the efforts of like minded organizations.

The proportion of GP's to population has been steadily declining since around 1995 to a point now where Ontario, at 104 GP/FP per 100,000 population has the least GP's in Canada.  The rural proportion is about 36% worse than the Ontario urban average with 68.6 GP/FP per 100,000.  Specialists are even more centralized in the cities.  Northern parts of the province are sparsely populated and remote with great challenges of physician access.  The greatest absolute shortage in number of rural physicians is in southern Ontario.

The Section on Rural Practice feels that an integrated approach is needed that includes

• Educational reform to increase rural origin students and rural friendly curriculae in medical school
• Increases in medical school enrolment and reduction in barriers in Ontario for other Canadain physicians
• Rural relativity that adjusts income for isolation (a rurality gradient)
• Reduction of the gap between payment for Family Practice with Specialty Practice to increase Family Practice as a Career Choice
• Relativity within family practice to restore comprehensive general practice as the most desired practice style

The section's executive this year includes Peter Hutten-Czapski (chair), Joshua Tepper, Steven Arif and Peter Englert as past chair.

Rural Documents & Links

Select Newsletter to download

Select May 2005 Apr 2005 Mar 2005 Feb 2005 Jan 2005 Dec 2004 Nov 2004

• Billing Codes
  
• Quebec Translator
• Ontario codes Oct 05
  
• Underserviced programs
  
• Clinical aids
• SRPC diabetes flowchart
• C-Spine review
  
• SoRP Minutes
  
• October 04 AGM
• Family Health Teams
  
• Rural FHT Issues
• Background
  
• Application form (doc) or (pdf)